Secure Communication Protocol: Application to Large Number of Distributed Sensors
Résumé
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems control many of our critical industrial infrastructures. Currently, most SCADA systems are considered insecure due to their lack of security measures. The increased number of connections between SCADA systems along with other factors, caused an augmentation in the threats and attacks on SCADA. Many solutions were proposed to secure SCADA
communications. However, any undertaken security measure while communicating unencrypted messages would not be robust
in case of attacks. The numerous embedded devices used in SCADA make it hard to consider classic cryptography, although,
some SCADA systems already implemented such algorithms.
In this paper, we present a new approach to secure SCADA communications by using dynamically modified signals instead of plain or encrypted messages. Our solution can be implemented in low cost electrical chips (used on sensors, switches, etc.) or as a software (used on servers, etc.). The Reconfigurable Information Transmitter Agent (RITA) protocol that we present can also be used to secure any type of communication that respects the protocol’s constraints. The solution, while still lacking the necessary analysis to ensure its security level, is
promising. This approach is planned to be implemented on a large number of distributed underwater sensors.